Search by mood – the new way to shop for hotels

For anyone feeling uninspired or overwhelmed when it comes to deciding where to go for a weekend away, French company Accorhotels has partnered with tech start-up Travelsify to create a new way of searching for hotels – according to your mood. Jenny Southan reports

It’s no wonder travellers are finding it difficult to choose where to stay. Accorhotels alone operates in 95 countries and has a portfolio of more than 4,000 hotels across 21 different brands, including Raffles, Sofitel Legend, SO Sofitel, Onefinestay, Swissôtel, 25 Hours, Mama Shelter, Jo & Joe, and Grand Mercure.

Whether you desire a romantic retreat or a hedonistic getaway, the new Accorhotels MoodMatch service will come up with suggestions of where to stay.

How does it work? Accorhotels has employed intelligence packaged by Travelsify from its “Hotel DNA content platform”, which claims to have analysed every hotel in the world according to “a unique and weighted sequence of attributes that reflect the guest experience”.

The way it has done this is by using artificial intelligence to scan over 100 million natural language online hotel reviews and extracting 34 key qualities that are important to people when booking. (For example: cosy, spacious, stylish, bright, gourmet, views, vintage, classic, nightlife, luxury and design.) These can then be matched with the way you feel.So instead of thinking about the destination that best suits your preferences, and then spending hours searching for the right kind of hotel, you can be immediately guided by AI insights that prescribe the perfect stay for your state of mind.

Romain Roulleau, senior vice-president of e-commerce and digital services for Accorhotels, says: “Nowadays, travellers aspire to unique travel experiences; with this new, user-friendly and fun way of finding their next destination by initially being led by their emotions and where the mood takes them, we are providing a ground-breaking way of searching, which goes far beyond finding a hotel solely based on destination.”

Accorhotels explains that “if users like what they see, all they have to do to continue their journey is click on the photo of the hotel they have been matched with to access the hotel details and enter their dates to find out about prices and availability”.

Let’s give it a go… Today, Globetrender wants peace and quiet. Where does MoodMatch suggest it stays? Before it comes up with an answer, it asks what kind of interior design I like. I choose “zen”. Then it asks about the type of location. I opt for “waterfront”. Anything else? Outdoor pool please. The hotel which I have a 100 per cent match with is the Hotel Windsor in Nice. It’s set in a tropical garden and has a bohemian vibe to it that I immediately like. I’m impressed.

Not just for Accorhotels, this metadata can be harnessed by any online booking platform, hotel group, artificial intelligence or voice-based travel bot, or targeted advertising platform to better tailor the search and booking experience. This means MoodMatch searches will become much more prevalent – not just for hotels, but restaurants, package holidays and excursions.

Bruno Chauvat, CEO at Travelsify, says: “With the launch of MoodMatch, Accorhotels once again proves its capacity to innovate and adapt to the new ways of searching for hotels. We are glad that it chose to implement Travelsify’s unique technology to personalise its offer according to travellers’ preferences.”

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